EDIT: The article is a bit wonky on it's explanations. This video has more accurate details:

(the link description is still accurate though. 10% of all the traffic on the internet is protected (indirectly) by a wall of lava lamps)

My wife (who's got a strong math background but not much in the way of CS) once asked me how computers can produce random numbers. It's a very good question, and the short answer is that they can't; they can produce numbers that look random, and that's good enough for most use-cases, but there are security risks when these pseudo-random numbers turn out not to be as random as they seem.

And that to generate truly random numbers, you need to use some kind of analog source, like, yes, a lava lamp.

TIL: During WWII Illinois (and other states) conserved metal by making license plates out of compressed soybean. Goats had a tendency to bite these plates right off the trucks, which seems to be (at least the most direct contribution to) why we have the image of goats chewing on tin cans today.

The belief that eating carrots improves night vision is a myth put forward by the British in World War II to mislead the enemy about their improved radar capabilities, when German bomber losses rose dramatically later in the Battle of Britain.

British Intelligence didn’t want the Germans to find out about the superior new technology helping protect the nation, so they created a rumor to afford a somewhat plausible-sounding explanation for the sudden increase in bombers being shot down. News stories began appearing in the British press about extraordinary personnel manning the defenses, including Flight Lieutenant John Cunningham, an RAF pilot dubbed “Cat’s Eyes” on the basis of his exceptional night vision that allowed him to spot his prey in the dark. Cunningham’s abilities were chalked up to his love of carrots. Further stories claimed RAF pilots were being fed goodly amounts of this root vegetable to foster similar abilities in them.

When they designed the South African flag, the people in charge of it had naturally decided they needed to get Nelson Mandela's approval of it before it could become official. Under a lot of time pressure, they faxed the design over along with instructions for how to colour it in, since the faxes were, of course, black and white.

There's a lot of shit like this. When they were making Gladiator (with Crowe) they wanted to include a scene where all the Gladiators (Crowe included, probably) go out before a fight and endorse local products, like modern athletes do. But of course, modern audiences wouldn't accept that that was a thing that actually happened all the time, so they cut it.

On Tv Tropes, it's called "Aluminum Christmas Trees". Things that existed in real life history but people won't believe in because it's too gaudy or weird.

I liked the comment that there were clearly two sets of time travellers: One set who kept saving the inventor of the Saxophone, and another bunch of idiots who kept trying to kill the wrong Adolph.

Also, it turns out that isn't even a complete list of his near death/painful experiences. In addition to the above, he also suffered the following as a young child:

- At the age of three, he swallowed a pin,- Burnt himself seriously in a gunpowder explosion,- Fell onto a hot cast iron frying pan, burning his side,- Survived poisoning and suffocation in his own bedroom where varnished items were kept during the night

His mother once said that "he's a child condemned to misfortune; he won't live." His neighbors called him "little Sax, the ghost".